New Facebook Graph Search gives users power to slice and dice info from friends

Facebook's Graph Search allows users to see trends and cull information from their friends, or even friends of friends.

Florence Ion

Facebook announced a new method of sorting and consuming information disseminated on the social network at a press conference in Menlo Park, CA Tuesday. The service, called “Graph Search,” allows users to enter a query on Facebook and get answers based on cross-sections of information within their social network.

“Graph search is not Web search,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. Zuckerberg pointed out that a Web search with the query “hip-hop” will present links about hip-hop; Facebook’s graph search, on the other hand, can answer a query like “Which of my friends live in San Francisco?”

Zuckerberg described “people, photos, places, and interests” as four potential search dimensions for graph search. Zuckerberg used the intersections of these areas to see Mexican restaurants his friends had been to in the Palo Alto area, as well as to find the best-liked photo of him and his wife in order to decide which one to use on a Christmas card. Graph search queries use phrases rather than keywords: “Friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter” was one example.

Facebook noted that the search could apply not only to current friends, but to people a user might have met in real life and “[wants] to meet them on Facebook.” For instance, if a user met at friend of a friend who mentioned he went to Kenyon but didn’t catch his last name, the query “People named Andrew who are friends with Jacqui and went to Kenyon” would locate him” (if his privacy settings allow him to be searchable). Facebook also hinted at the possibilities of the site as a place to get dates—simply query “Friends of friends who are single men,” ladies.

Other searches that users could conduct: friends with photos tagged in Yellowstone National Park or Paris, France; TV shows enjoyed by software engineers; bars in Dublin, Ireland that have been “liked” specifically by people who live in Dublin, Ireland.

Facebook stressed that users can only search content that has been shared with them—for instance, if it’s not in your profile that you watch Game of Thrones or you never check in to the Mexican restaurants you frequent, you’ll never appear in those searches. However, if a friend checks you in to a Mexican restaurant you attend with them and makes that post public, that will likely feed into any graph searches your friends do. Likewise, it appears that any post that is public (i.e., technically shared with every Facebook user) can be involved in a query made by any user, regardless of their degree of direct social involvement with you.

Zuckerberg highlighted the new privacy controls Facebook introduced in recent weeks. The service now allows users to batch-untag pictures or posts from an Activity Log pane on the website, as well as create a request within the same window requesting that the photo owner remove the post or picture completely.

Users who may be interested in this feature could flock to more completely fill in their interests, activities, and photos. But the opposite may also happen: users who don’t want to be involved in their friends’ searches might be compelled to scrape their profiles of salient information and start worrying about how their friends involve them by tagging them in posts, check-ins, and pictures.

Zuckerberg ended by pointing out that Facebook search also integrates with Bing, to fill in the search gaps that users may try to fulfill with graph search.

A limited beta of Facebook's graph search will begin rolling out January 16. Initially, the searches will only be able to be conducted in English (spoken by 40 percent of the service's user base), but Zuckerberg stated that Facebook was only "starting" with that language.

Facebook's event is currently in progress, and we will update this article as more details become available. For up-to-the-minute information, you can watch our liveblog.

Facebook founder and CEO. Zuckerberg pointed out that a web search with the query “hip hop” will present links about hip hop; Facebook’s graph search, on the other hand, can answer a query like “Which of my friends live in San Francisco?”

If you don't know which of your friends live in (insert city here), then maybe you should review the meaning of the word 'friend'.

Because "people whom I was previously on friendly terms with but whom I haven't talked to in a while and I want to reconnect with" takes longer to say than just "friend". Or maybe you're just interested in friends of friends.

Let's say you're interviewing for a job in Seattle and don't know anyone there. In that case, you don't need close friends. The old college classmate whom you fell out of touch with after moving to different cities ten years ago may not be a close friend but might be a Facebook "friend" and would probably suffice for purposes like providing a couch to crash on or asking questions like, "Does the weather bother you?"